"We are being forced to take a road that is the scene of fighting and looting": Chaos and indiscriminate shooting prevent aid from reaching the most vulnerable in Gaza

Following a partial pause in bombing announced Sunday by Israel, under international pressure over the risk of famine, humanitarian aid has begun to enter the besieged territory again, but in quantities deemed largely insufficient by international organizations.

Every day, AFP correspondents witness dramatic scenes where desperate crowds rush, often risking their lives, to vehicles loaded with food or to airdrop sites , operated in recent days by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, the United Kingdom and France.

On Thursday in Al-Zawayda (center), at the sight of pallets parachuted by a plane, emaciated Palestinians rushed in their dozens, jostling and tearing up the packages in a cloud of dust.

"Hunger has driven people to turn against each other. People are fighting each other with knives ," Amir Zaqot, who came to seek help, told AFP.

To avoid overflows, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers are instructed to stop and let people serve themselves. But to no avail.

"A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured while picking up the bag," sighs a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, north of the Gaza Strip.

"No way to escape"

Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah (south) to queue and reserve his place: there were already "thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils" .

"Suddenly, we heard gunshots. There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, old people," said the 42-year-old. "The scene was tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead."

Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since May 27, "most" by the Israeli army while they were waiting for humanitarian aid, the UN accused Friday. The Israeli army denies targeting aid recipients, instead firing "warning shots" when people approach too close to its positions.

Refusal to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, dangerous routes... For months, international organizations have also been denouncing repeated obstructions by the Israeli authorities which, according to these same organizations, fuel the disorder.

On Tuesday, in Zikim, " the Israeli army changed the WFP's loading plans at the last minute , mixing up the cargo and forcing the convoy to leave earlier than planned, without adequate security," said a senior UN official on condition of anonymity.

On the southern side, at the Kerem Shalom crossing, "there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (located in the center of the Gaza Strip, editor's note)," says an NGO official, who also prefers to remain anonymous. "One is more or less safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take."

"Darwin" in Gaza

Some of the aid is looted by gangs - who often directly attack warehouses - and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts.

"It's a kind of Darwinian experiment where only the fittest survive: the hungriest don't have the energy to run after a truck, wait for hours in the sun, fight over a bag of flour," says Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

"We are in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send children to have their skin pierced at distribution points or during looting. It has become a new profession," explains Jean-Guy Vataux, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from Gaza.

These supplies, he said, are then resold to "those who still have the means to buy them" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25 kg bag of flour can exceed 400 dollars.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of plundering UN humanitarian aid, which has delivered the bulk of aid since the start of the war sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement's unprecedented attack in October 2023.

These accusations justified the total blockade imposed on Gaza between March and May, then the establishment, at the end of May, of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organization supported by Israel and the United States, which claims to have since become the main aid provider, but with which other organizations refuse to work.

However, it only has four distribution points for more than two million inhabitants, which the UN describes as a "death trap".

"Hamas (...) has repeatedly stolen humanitarian aid from the people of Gaza by shooting Palestinians," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said again on Monday.

According to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the New York Times on July 26, Hamas may have diverted some aid from some organizations, but there is "no evidence" that it regularly stole UN food.

Much weakened, Hamas is now mainly composed of "decentralized autonomous cells that hide here and there in a tunnel or a destroyed house," says researcher Muhammad Shehada: "They (Hamas fighters) are no longer visible on the ground, because they are immediately identified by Israeli drones and tracked down."

Drug trafficking

Humanitarian officials told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, Gaza police - which includes many Hamas members - helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting.

“Agencies, the UN, and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called on the Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy manager in Gaza. “These calls have largely been ignored.”

The Israeli army is even suspected of having equipped criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to prosper and plunder.

"The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the surveillance of Israeli forces, and they have been allowed to operate near the Kerem Shalom crossing point," accused Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Palestinian territories at the end of May during a press briefing.

According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control.

The ECFR describes Mr. Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang (...) accused of looting aid trucks" in Gaza. Israeli authorities themselves admitted in June that they support and arm Palestinian clans opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Yasser Abu Shabab.

According to Michael Milshtein of the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, several of its members are involved in "all kinds of criminal activities," including drug trafficking through the Egyptian Sinai.

Other criminal gangs are involved in looting, attacking convoys, beating and kidnapping truck drivers in other areas of the Gaza Strip, such as Khan Younis and the outskirts of Gaza City, Muhammad Shehada also claims.

These claims are corroborated by a humanitarian worker who adds: "None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army."